The archives of the articles, reviews, interviews and other ramblings written by Sarah E. Jahier (aka Fatally Yours).

Monday, May 18, 2009

Plague Town (2009)

You don’t have to convince me that kids are creepy. I’ve loathed the
little buggers ever since I took a job as a babysitter over the course
of a summer while I was a teen. The little Spawns of Satan (as I liked
to call them) ran me ragged, throwing tantrums, locking me out of the
house, torturing me with Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys and
generally being little monsters. So, I am always eager to watch evil kid
movies, just to see how unpleasant children can be.

Enter Plague Town…14 years ago in a small Irish
village something unmentionable was born. So evil was it that the priest
was called to kill it, but its parents had different plans. In the
present day, a dysfunctional American family is visiting the Irish
countryside to try to bond with each other. The father, Jerry (David
Lombard), has brought along his fiancee Annette (Lindsay Goranson) to
try and bond with his two girls, the gothy Molly (Josslyn DeCrusta) and
blond bitch Jessica (Erica Rhodes). Jessica took a fancy to an
Englishman named Robin (James Warke), so he too has come along for this
family adventure, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family. In
between bickering with each other, the family manages to miss the last
bus back into town and find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere
with nightfall quickly approaching.

Walking down the road they find an abandoned car, complete with
unperturbed luggage, on the side of the road. While Robin and Jessica
walk to find help, the remaining three decide to wait in the car. When
Robin and Jessica fail to return, the father sets out to find some help.
Soon, they all discover that malformed, sadistic kids roam the woods
and they aren’t too happy with the outsiders invading their turf.

Supposedly Plague Town was based upon one scene
writers David Gregory (who also directed) and John Cregan came up with.
This just happens to be THE creepiest and strongest scene in the entire
film and involves the character of Rosemary (Kate Aspinwall), the
matriarch of the deformed children who has glassy doll eyes in place of
her peepers (just take a look at the poster). It’s unfortunate that this
is the only scene in the entire film that is effective, because it
shows just what tremendous potential this film had. Any potential this
film showed is quickly lost in the hackneyed script, undeveloped story
and bad acting.

The biggest problem was with the script. The story just felt
undeveloped and a bit generic. Not enough was done by Gregory and Cregan
to make it a memorable story and I lost interest very quickly. There
just wasn’t enough to hold the weak story together and it definitely
could have used more development. Plague Town just didn’t have enough
material to justify making it a feature-length film and because of that
it felt like most scenes were used as padding instead of being used to
move the story along. I really would have liked to see more time spent
on the deformed kids and the little village they came from.

The killer kids were the most interesting characters in the film, but
instead of spending time on their backstory we have to watch the
American family bickering between each other. Right off the bat the
characters of the family are annoying, especially Jessica. There’s also a
certain amount of awkwardness about the characters that doesn’t lend
credibility that they are a family. The dialogue feels forced and a bit
off…not like a family but rather like a group of strangers who are
forced to communicate (but perhaps that was the point).

The characters may have been written badly, but the actors don’t do
much to commend their performances either. Some disappear into the
background of the film altogether, like Lombard (Jerry, the father) and
Goranson (Annette, the father’s fiancee), while others just grate on
your nerves, like Rhodes (Jessica). The only two actors who did a decent
job were DeCrosta as Molly and Warke as Robin. Warke’s encounters with
the evil children are especially memorable, especially when he survives a
face-disfiguring shotgun blast and has a creepy meeting with Rosemary.

As for the scares, except for the creepy first encounter with Rosemary, Plague Town
continued to disappoint. There are some pretty laughable scenes with
the kids hitting people with tree branches, someone getting beat to
death with a hubcap and little kids running through the mist. However, I
really did like the creepy looks of the children, from the masks they
wore (think Michael Myers’ white mask) to their pale, demon-like faces. I
also enjoyed the only memorable kill scene of the film where someone is
“scalped” by a taut piano wire. With only these two instances to
commend the film, though, I find it hard-pressed to recommend Plague Town.

Plague Town tends to drag on and on, like the
filmmakers needed to add more to the story to make it feel more
complete. What needed to be done was focus more on the horrific mutant
children and show more scenes with the nightmare-inducing Rosemary. By
the third act, I was barely keeping my eyes open and the inclusion of
the villagers really felt tacked on.

I went into Plague Town (despite the misleading
title) to be spooked by creepy kids raising hell, but instead I was
disappointed by lack of cohesive story, bad acting, poor pacing and only
a few scares. Plus, I think the kids I babysat for in high school could
whip these mutant kids’ asses.